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MASTRONARDE, D.J., The Art of Euripides. Dramatic Technique and Social Context. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2015. 1st paperback ed. XIII,361p. Paperback. ‘According to Richard Buxton (‘Persuasion in Greek Tragedy”), ‘Euripides is a dramatist of bewildering variety and puzzling contradictoriness. Far more than Aischylos or Sophokles, he defies reduction to a simple formula.’ Mastronarde’s splendid new book shows that its author is not only fully aware of of this perceived difference between Euripides and his fellow tragic poets, but is sensitive to the reasons for the perception. (…) The opening chapter is taken up with an overview of the reception of Euripides’ plays, beginning with his contemporary Aristophanes and culminating with an excellent and well-balanced outline of trends in Euripidean criticism since the mid-twentieth century (14-25), as well as a brief statement of the book’s ‘approaches and scope’ (25-28). Mastronarde’s approach is ‘eclectic, flexible, and wary if totalizing interpretations’ (25), like the work of Euripides himself, Mastronarde's book is 'exploratory and aporetic'. (viii). (…) Typical of Mastronarde’s undogmatic method are chapters 2 and 3, which examine matters of genre and structure. Given the hybrid nature of the tragic genre (…) it is understandable that the genre can accommodate the variety of tones and outcomes exhibited by plays like ‘Bacchae’ and ‘Medea’ on the one hand and ‘Helen’ and ‘Alcestis’ on the other. (…) Mastronarde patiently guides the reader along a ‘continuum of possibilities’ (64) that stretches from the tightly constructed Hippolytus to the more ‘open’ ‘Orestes’. And yet both plays employ their differing structures with equal effectiveness to explore similar issues of vengeance, coercion, and alienation. The same approach is adhered to through the remaining chapters, of which the last, on male characters, is perhaps the most illuminating. In it, the extraordinary range of Euripidean men is shown to illustrate the capacity of the tragic genre to provide ‘an arena of fantasy or alternative experience that invites the audience to identify temporarily with figures of many statuses’. (282). (DAVID SANSONE in Classical World, 2012, pp.275-76). € 29.50 (New) ISBN: 9781107646612